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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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 Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:51 am Post subject: |
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What does "take action" mean? The UN and IPCC interpretation is to make the U.S. pay not only reparations but permanent support and punitive bonuses to the other 191 nations of the world, to the tune of scores of trillions of dollars.
How does my oft-repeated statement that <I'm not qualified to dispute Lomborg's polynational research conclusion that AGW is probably real but neither sufficiently G or A to warrant bankrupting the nation and thus destroying the free world in a vain, naive, and outright futile attempt to regulate the global temperature> warrant your stupid insult? |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4162
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 8:56 am Post subject: |
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LHDR said:
| Quote: | | Contrary to what you are claiming so casually, global warming and the role of man was not "automatically" assumed. Instead, it has been investigated for many years and still is. A good example of a current summary of this work is a study supported by the US National Academy of Sciences, http://dels.nas.edu/Report/America-Climate-Choices-2011/12781 (or page 109, this thread). |
I find it very interesting that the report from the US NAOS you identified, never says the words "global warming" only "climate change". Why is that? And if you say that it is the same thing, I am not buying it.
What I also find interesting in almost everything I see about global warming/climate change is that the earth has cycled through this phase probably dozens of times before and no doubt will do it again. Is this happening now or not? Why does everyone avoid this question?
I think global warming and climate change are/have been at play and my take on the whole thing is -
1. If the US did everything possible, it likely would have little if any effect.
2. If the world did everything possible (which is not possible), if may or may not have an effect.
3. I don't want to see trillions of dollars tossed at a problem that may or may not be solvable, at least not until we know more about the situation.
4. Things that the US and some of the world are doing are not totally wasted, since it no doubt helps with cleaner air & water.
5. I am afraid that many see the solution to a toenail infection as the removal of the toe and then later find out that it wasn't really an infection, just too much time in booties while windsurfing. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:42 am Post subject: |
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| techno900 wrote: | | my take on the whole thing is - |
Yeah, but you're clearly an arrogant heretic racist hater denier greedy biblethumper. |
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pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 11:48 am Post subject: |
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| isobars wrote: |
Yeah, but you're clearly an arrogant heretic racist hater denier greedy biblethumper. |
Probably why you get along so well with him, Mikey.
____
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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Mike insulting someone new?
He really hates religious people. |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4162
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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keycocker said:
| Quote: | Mike insulting someone new?
He really hates religious people. |
Humor, for those that lean right far enough to get it. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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In Saturday's WSJ, Ridley asks and addresses the question, "If warming is supposed to be "global," shouldn't sea ice retreat at both ends of the world?"
http://tinyurl.com/brnkrbe |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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Mike--did you know the world is tilted, not just your world view?
This is a heat balance question, and not difficult for someone that pretends to be a rocket scientist. But he got it wrong anyway. |
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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Humor as well techno, for those who know iso.
He supplies opinions to everyone here. That last bit was an example of him calling you names and attributing the name calling to others, so it is OK.
He wants to pretend the others are as nasty as he is but they all operate at a much more educated level.
The rest of us are weary of it.You haven't yet read dozens of vulgar insults that he will think of and claim you support.
His contempt for those of us who believe is often expressed, then denied, then repeated. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:21 am Post subject: |
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Some hard nosed businesses--who aren't making money denying warming--are starting to plan for climate change. Last year's Thailand floods cost $15 to $20 billion, and disrupted both the automotive and computer hardware supply chain.
| Quote: | By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
August 24 2006: 1:31 PM EDT
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Throughout their history, insurance companies have done more than collect premiums and pay claims. They've made the world a safer place - by promoting fire prevention, lobbying for building codes, testing the crash-worthiness of cars and rating vehicles for safety.
Now some insurers are worried by the threat to their business posed by climate change. And they are starting to see what, if anything, they can do about it.
Some examples:
Marsh (Charts), the world's largest insurance broker, last spring sent a 36-page "risk alert" on Climate Change to clients that, among other things, looked at the possible relationship between climate change and natural disasters.
"Climate change - often referred to as 'global warming' - is one of the most significant emerging risks facing the world today, presenting tremendous challenges to the environment, to the world economy, and to individual businesses," the report said.
"Businesses - if they haven't already - must begin to account for it in their strategic and operation planning."
AIG (Charts), the giant global insurer, issued a statement on climate change that says it "recognizes the scientific consensus that climate change is a reality and is likely in large part the result of human activities that have led to increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere."
The company has hired an economist who formerly worked for the nonprofit Environmental Defense to coordinate its climate change activities. Among other things, it is making private equity investments - it wouldn't say how much - in projects and technologies that reduce or offset greenhouse gas emissions.
Fireman's Fund, a unit of Allianz AG (Charts), this fall plans to introduce commercial insurance policies designed to support and encourage the development of "green" buildings that save energy and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
"We see more and more tenants looking for 'green' space," says Steven Bushnell, a company executive who helped develop the product. Fireman's wants to accelerate that trend.
U.S. industry off to a late start
None of these are world-changing moves but they represent steps in the right direction for an industry that ought to be at the forefront when it comes to dealing with the problem of global warming.
"This industry is perfectly situated to be a major part of the solution," says Mindy Lubber, the president of CERES, a coalition of environmental groups and institutional investors that has just published a report on the insurance industry and climate change.
The CERES report, which is called From Risk to Opportunity: How Insurers Can Proactively and Profitably Manage Climate Change, argues that the industry has a long-term interest in addressing the risk of global warming, and that it can make money by designing products designed to mitigate against climate change.
Some of the new initiatives are quite complex. Several insurers, for example, are developing products like "wind derivatives," which are designed to reduce the risks of building wind energy projects.
Other ideas are simpler. Pay-as-you-drive auto insurance offers reduced rates to car owners who drive less. (This makes business sense, of course, because their accident risks are lower.) The concept has been around for years but General Motors' GMAC insurance unit now couples a pay-as-you-drive policy with its OnStar global-positioning system that accurately measures miles driven. The upshot is that drivers who use their cars less and produce fewer greenhouse gases pay lower rates.
The St. Paul Travelers Companies (Charts) goes a step further. Travelers offers a 10 percent discount in car insurance rates for owners of hybrid cars.
The fact that the U.S. insurance industry is finally taking up the issue of global warming shouldn't be surprising; the surprise is that the industry took so long to wake up to the problem.
By contrast, European insurers, notably Swiss Re, have been grappling with climate change for years. They are, for instance, strong supporters of the Carbon Disclosure Project, an effort by big institutional investors to get public companies to assess the risks of climate change. Some U.S. insurers didn't even join in that project.
Why the U.S. industry is changing now isn't clear. The growing scientific consensus around global warming, cited by AIG, is probably one reason. Another, surely, are the weather-related disasters of the last couple of years, notably Hurricane Katrina.
In 2005, the insurance industry paid out a record $57 billion in weather-related losses, as my colleague John Simons reports in the current issue of Fortune. The industry has responded, in part, by raising rates and refusing to insure homeowners in coastal regions. But those are neither growth strategies nor ways for a highly regulated industry to win friends.
It will be interesting to see whether the insurers will now join in the Washington debate over climate change. Such influential companies as General Electric, Wal-Mart and Shell now say that they believe that the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
If big insurers join them, their voices will be taken seriously on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. They could once again help make the world safer for the rest of us. |
Of course, last year claims were up:
| Quote: | Published: Monday, 1 Aug 2011 | 9:33 AM ET Text Size By: Janet Whitman,
As a surge in catastrophic weather events leads to billions of dollars in claims, climate change may pose the insurance industry’s biggest problem — and profit potential.
An unusual onslaught of floods in Mississippi, tornadoes in the Midwest, drought and wildfires in Texas and earthquakes abroad has wiped out hope of much profit for many insurance and reinsurance companies this year.
Natural disasters, including Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, have left the industry on the hook for $60 billion in the first six months of this year alone, according to data from reinsurance giant Munich Re.
That’s nearly five times the first-half average since 2001, and the oftentimes costly hurricane season is just getting underway.
Although the damage has been worse than expected, the industry has plenty of capital set aside to weather the losses — barring the occurrence of more off-the-charts disasters, which insurers and reinsurers say may or may not be linked to global warming.
“Many companies that write large catastrophe risks, primarily reinsurance companies, are getting paid money in many years when nothing happens,” says Matthew Rohrmann, an insurance industry analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “There really haven’t been that many devastating hurricanes over the past few years, for example, and reinsurers and insurers are still getting paid premiums. They may lose a lot of money in one year, but their pricing is based on many years.”
Indeed, a year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita wiped out a whopping 25 years worth of insurance premiums back in 2005, the industry bounced back with record profits.
The big question now is to what degree might this year’s wave of extreme weather — including record-breaking floods, devastating wildfires, tornado outbreaks and scorching heat waves across the country — might increasingly become the norm as the planet warms. |
Looks like this is going to be a pretty expensive "myth", but the carbon companies continue to be successful in transfering those costs to others. |
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